Web browsers are software applications that enable the viewing of information accessible on the World Wide Web (or Web). At its most basic, the Web is a collection of documents written using programming languages that web browsers can interpret. Such languages include, for example, a hyper text markup language (HTML), an eXtensible markup language (XML), and the like. Microsoft Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox®, Safari, and Opera are just to name a few examples of web browsers.
Browser extensions are applications such as plug-ins or add-ons that are downloaded and installed on an individual computing device on which a web browser is operating. The browser extensions are compiled separately for each type of web browser. A prime example for a browser extension is a downloadable toolbar. When installed a toolbar allows users to customize their browsing experience.
A typical toolbar includes a search bar where a user can insert her/his search key words which are directly fed into one or more on-line search engines. In addition, a toolbar may include icons serving merely as bookmarks internet resources, such as websites, RSS feeds, email notifications, streamed radio stations, and so on. Thus, the toolbar functionality is limited to provide a shortcut access to such internet resources and/or search engines. In addition, customization of a toolbar is limited to adding a shortcut (a bookmark) icon. In order to add new features generally a new toolbar version is released by the toolbar creator. Then, a user needs to uninstall the previous version and install the new version.